


all the old familiar places (that this heart of mine embraces)

by nagia



Series: Have Faith Or Pandemonium [3]
Category: Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: Gen, also semi-colons were the only separator that worked there, yes you did recognize bruce timm; paul dini; and mitch brian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-15
Updated: 2012-08-15
Packaged: 2017-11-12 04:39:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/486787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagia/pseuds/nagia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gotham recovers.  Gotham remembers.  Gotham rebuilds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the old familiar places (that this heart of mine embraces)

Marla's good at pegging ages, so she's pretty sure this woman can't be more than fifty. Of course, the winter they had, she might just be an old forty-five. She could have been pretty once, or maybe motherly. Now she's not even grandmotherly, even though some of her hair has gone gray and her skin seems thinner, more translucent. The crows feet are what strikes Marla at first glance. So do the frown lines around her mouth.

But her eyes are sharp, if sunken.

Gleeson is only half in the shot, too busy darting forward to shove the microphone into the older woman's face, just under her mouth. "Do you remember where you were?"

Gleeson's usually more professional than this. Usually asks better questions, too, but orders came down from on high. Human interest. _Where were you?_ Like where people _were_ is anything anybody gives a shit about a year later.

Credit where it's due: "Where were you?" is better than the completely ass-brained "How do you feel about...?" Honestly, "Where were you?" is the only question that can begin to encompass what they're all really wanting to know.

The not-even-grandmotherly-anymore woman simply lifts her cane — a heavy, ugly, functional piece of work with a white rubber cap on the end — and says, "Stuck in a ditch. They broke my hip when they tossed me out of my house."

Gleeson looks back at the camera. The look flashes across her face really quick, but Marla's been seeing it a lot today. Not just from Gleeson but from dock workers and baristas, too: sick, haunted, scared. Not just _We did that_ but _How could we, why could we?_ and _I never knew I had that inside me_.

But even if Gleeson's usually better than this, she's still definitely a professional. The look is gone almost as quick as it appeared, and when she moves onto the next person, she makes _Where were you?_ sound more like _How do you think we got here? And where the hell are we even going?_

* * *

The Bat Signal stays lit all night one night, but not even Vale and Knox can come up with evidence of a Bat-worthy crime. What makes anything Bat-worthy is anybody's guess.

The local newsblogs and morning radio jockeys decide that the police ran it all night to deter crime.

* * *

The ESPN logo flashes, colors a little muted and a strip of black running through, and Rick's Sports Bar goes silent. It doesn't seem to matter that the game hasn't really started yet — the talking heads have been, kind of still are, yakking on about up-and-coming players and rehashing the coaches's old losses.

That logo clues them in for what's coming next. And maybe in a year, maybe in two years, they'll all roll their eyes and pre-emptively order beer or wings. Today, though, every man in the room shuts up and watches.

Dan gets the feeling that some are quiet out of respect, and some are quiet because of what they lost, but most are quiet out of morbid curiosity. How are these talking heads who didn't live it, didn't see it, didn't lift a finger gonna fuck up talking about it?

"Hard to believe it's been two years since the Bane incident, Paul," says Mitch.

"No kidding. You know, Gotham seems to be pulling itself together. Really admirable, watching an entire city rise up and overcome that kind of devastation."

Joe tosses half a bowl of Doritos at one of the screens. (Dan makes a mental note about Joe's tab.) "Hey, fuck you!"

The ESPN logo flashes again. The camera cuts to a man whose cheeks are just starting to fill back out again, cheekbones stark and eyes a little sunken. He's got a scar above his eyebrow he didn't have two years ago.

On voice-over, Paul asks, "Timm, you're our Gothamite and were our eyes in Gotham Stadium — now the Gotham Knights Memorial Stadium — when it all started. What do you remember most?"

Timm's lips twitch into something too thin and controlled and tense to be a smile. But since his lips curve up, what the hell else could you call it?

"Being hungry. Being cold. The snow in front of some the houses looked like a Pepto-Bismol Slushie."

The bar goes quiet again. Nobody says anything, not even to order another round. So Dan pours one for the house, says it's on the house. Any more of this "Bane Incident" remembrance shit by outsiders — hell, any more memories shared by Gothamites — and they're all going to need it.

Christ, they've still got half an hour 'til first down.

* * *

Word on the street is: Joker's pissed that the Batman is dead.

Word in the Narrows is: Joker's pissed somebody killed Bane before he could.

Word on the street is: Joker's none too happy about that guy in the red helmet.

Word in the Narrows is: Joker can't wait to get out there and _play_ with him

Nobody stops to wonder who the fuck told the Joker anything about the Batman or the new guy — or how anyone heard Joker's thoughts on the matter and didn't die.

* * *

It's a canned segment, super-imposed behind Summer Gleeson's broad, newscaster smile.

"Gordon Godfrey here, to ask the questions no one else will. The hard question: where did Bane get the money? Where did he get the tanks that decimated the Gotham Police Force three short years ago?"

Behind Gleeson's head, Godfrey's cameraman zooms in to bring Godfrey's indignant expression into better focus.

"Why, this great city's largest source of employment, the corporation owned by our formerly very richest resident, Gotham City's own _Wayne Enterprises._ That's where!"

The canned segment stops. Marla zooms in on Gleeson. Her smile hasn't dropped a centimeter, but she waits two beats to start speaking. While she's silent, the smile stops meaning _I am on camera_ and starts meaning _Think critically about what this man just said._

"Good evening, Gotham. I'm Summer Gleeson of the Gotham Insider, here to tell you the true story behind Bane's use of Wayne Enterprises tanks. I'm sure we've all seen this. If you haven't, it's been making the rounds on tumblr and Facebook. I'm sure you'll see it again soon."

Marla does nothing. Zack and Griffith tap a few keys back in the booth. The micromonitor shows what the folks at home will see:

After a few moments, Gleeson starts speaking again. "Now, there's no question that Wayne Enterprises developed the tumblers. But did it willingly supply them to Bane's movement? That's the question Jack Ryder and I will answer for you tonight, Gotham."

* * *

#bayne enterprises?

_Reblogged 4 minutes ago from hoodisaster (originally from overheardon4chan)_

_5,829 notes_

* * *

It's a nice day. Cass sits on a bench just across the street from the old Wayne Enterprises building. She's supposed to sit inside and listen to classes now, but she doesn't take the same reading classes as everyone else. There's a vendor on the corner whose face and body always say _poor kid_ and will give her a free 'dog'. (It tases nothing like dog. She's _eaten_ dog before. Why Gothamites call it one, she's still not sure.) The vendor is always too busy saying _poor kid_ to notice that Cass slips a little money in his till.

Life's a little easier than it could be when people think your parents died three and a half years ago, in the Stadium. Now that she doesn't have to, she tries not to make their lives any harder for being generous.

Today, trucks from Metropolis roll up to the Wayne Enterprises building. Workmen pile out and carry in ladders and platforms. Their bodies say _we are busy_ and _we are tired_ and something else that Cass doesn't have any words for. It's exasperated without being final; an irritation rooted mostly in a lot of other, earlier irritations.

Later the next day, helicopters and a crane get involved. Cass tilts her head up, taking a bite out of her dog-that-has-no-dog-meat and catching relish with her finger.

They start taking away the letters underneath WAYNE.

It's a big word, one she's only just learning to read. They don't take all of it, though, just E-N-T-E-R-P.

She goes home. The next day, she's not alone when she goes to watch the building. He buys them both hot dogs and they sit on the bench side-by-side. He squints his eyes and his body says confusion and worry.

They take more letters away: R-I-S-E-S.

He's with her the next day, too. The workmen and the helicopter and the crane add new letters to replace ENTERPRISES.

They add L-U-T-H-O-R.

His body doesn't say confusion or worry. His face and his sweat and his body all scream: confusion. Lost. Worried. Afraid. And then he stops saying new things for a little while, body frozen on _worry_ , until he sweeps it all away.

WAYNE-LUTHOR the building tells them.

 _Doesn't matter. I'll fix it_ , his jaw and brows and back and shoulders tell her and the building and the rest of the street.

* * *

"What do you think of the Red Hood, the new vigilante supposedly responding to the Bat Signal?" Jack Ryder's better with the camera today than Summer Gleeson was three years ago.

The teen looks down at the mic, then up at Marla's camera. He smiles, a little slyly, and says, "I think he's been here a while. Four years sound good to you?"

Next, Ryder accosts a pair of twenty-somethings. Both women look starled — with one hastily disentangling her fingers from the redhead's — when he thrusts the microphone toward them and asks, "What about you? What do you think of the Red Hood? Is he a fitting successor for the Batman?"

The hasty woman looks to her partner, then shrugs. She points her thumb back, then turns and looks at the gift shop they just left. Like she's trying to say that at least one of them is a tourist. Why and how should they know? What she's really doing, of course, is obscuring her face from the camera.

"Miss Kane? Your thoughts? Does Gotham City even _need_ another Batman?"

The redhead looks straight at the camera and smiles. In the accent inherent to Army brats, she says, "I don't know if we need him. But I'm glad he's there."

She smiles wider. Ryder smiles too. Fade out; they'll film a wrap-up by the Batman statue.

* * *

A year since they took away ENTERPRISES and left LUTHOR. It's still there.

Fox's words are: "I think I know what to do." 

His voice echoes loud in the urban armory. Underneath his words, his voice says _I have a plan._ His body — the set of his shoulders, the smoothness as he breathes, the tilt of his chin — says _This isn't think. This is know._

* * *

Five years after the Bomb — the Bomb! A nice little euphemism for _The day Batman died and all the rest of us almost did too_ — they put a plaque on the bridge they had to rebuild. They rename it the Hugh Foley Bridge.

Anybody who knows Gothamites or has ever been part of the bridge and tunnel crowd knows that in five years, it's going to be the HF for short, the Foley if you're being polite, and on days the traffic is _really_ bad, the Fuckup. No disrespect to the Deputy Commissioner.

Jack Ryder goes around interviewing people. Usual bullshit: how do you feel about renaming the bridge? Do you think we needed to rename to remember? Should we have renamed the bridge for anyone else?

Three regular joes get on and say the brdige didn't need renaming. Five say Hugh Foley is fine. Enough say they should have renamed it for the Batman that Kevin Conrio loses count.

He makes a real effort to tune out JFK's newswatching TV's after that. If anybody asked him (and nobody's asking a customs security officer at JFK), they should have named it the Gotham Police Department Memorial Bridge. It'd end up nick-named the Thousand.

The "weather" TV goes to easy listening Muzak while it displays forecasts. Another lamebrain on the "news" TV starts a spiel about how they should have named the bridge for the Batman, and, like, drawn that emblem on some of the girders or the bolts holding the thing together. Because the Batman pulled them all together, it's symbolic, see?

Kevin snorts in disgust.

The woman across the counter, who has declared that she is carrying nothing much (of foreign origin, anyway) gives him a sympathetic smile. Her passport reads _Kitty Grimalkin_.

* * *

She takes the cab in from Bludhaven, leaves "Tom Grimalkin" in the little burb's only halfway decent extended stay. Getting from ground-level cab to ninth-story, heavily secured Bat Signal is easy.

The whip isn't exactly quiet, but it's good for pulling down fire escapes.

The man who answers the signal wears a red helmet. His armor glints a deep color. The bat emblem on his chest seems almost reddish.

Selina shakes her head. She kind of has to admire this level of independence, no matter how upset Bruce will be. "He's not going to like this. Are the other rumors true?"

The Red Hood doesn't remove his mask, but she hears him anyway: "He's not going to like that, either."

He points.

In the distance, she sees the Wayne building, all lit up like a beacon. Wayne Enterprises didn't bother with that five years ago. Of course, it's not Wayne Enterprises anymore.

"He'll hate that most of all," she says.

Blake nods, then crosses his arms. "We'll fix it."

Selina doesn't ask him if he has a mouse in his pocket. For one, it's a terrible joke. For another, she's got a feeling she knows exactly who he thinks he's talking about. He might even be right.

He's still got some explaining to do.


End file.
